What are a divorced woman's rights to maintenance and property after iddah ends?

Once iddah is complete, the husband's ongoing day-to-day maintenance obligation (nafaqah) generally ends, but this doesn't erase what he already owes her: any unpaid portion of her mehr remains fully due, and any personal property, gifts, or belongings she brought into or acquired during the marriage remain entirely her own — none of it reverts to the husband or his family. She is also free to remarry once iddah is over.

In India, the picture is a bit more layered than "maintenance stops at iddah": following Danial Latifi (see Q7), a husband is expected to make a fair, forward-looking financial provision for his ex-wife during the iddah period that is meant to reasonably cover her post-divorce future, not simply the iddah days themselves, and a divorced Muslim woman unable to maintain herself can also pursue maintenance through Section 144 of the BNSS (the successor to CrPC Section 125), which the Supreme Court reaffirmed applies to Muslim women regardless of personal-law provisions, in a 2024 ruling. Because these are two overlapping legal frameworks — religious nafaqah/mehr obligations and Indian statutory maintenance law — a woman navigating this after her iddah ends should get both scholarly and legal-aid or lawyer input specific to her situation, rather than relying on a general answer for what she's actually owed.

Source: general Sunni fiqh on post-iddah rights (mehr, property); Danial Latifi & Anr. v. Union of India (2001); Section 144, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023; Supreme Court ruling (2024) on Muslim women's eligibility for maintenance under the general maintenance law.